immediately repeal Reapportionment Act of 1929

[RicROC]

This is the act which sets the # of members at House of Reps at 435. Due to population shifts and increases, this is limit is out of balance. Immediately, Pres. Joe should try to lift the cap (fat chance with the Repub Senate) and recalculate the # based on the population on the smallest state. If it comes out to 700 Members in the House? ok. It's the Peoples House and should reflect will of the people.

But the real reason to recalculate this #, is because it reapportions the # of Electors to each state. Just trying to eliminate the Electoral College will be difficult because of the resistance from Red States. By recalculating and rebalancing the # of the electors, the outcome of the Electoral College should be more in line with the popular vote.

[StTimofEdenRoc]

1. Yes, I would love to see it.

[regnaD kciN]

2. As you point out, not a chance with the Republicans having a block...

Maybe if we're lucky enough to win both Georgia runoffs?

[WSHazel]

4. Yes, and no

Let's say it was set to a Rep for every 500,000 people. That would create a whole lot of new Reps in Red states too. The Dakotas would each get a new one. Idaho would get 2. This might not be as difficult a sale to the Red states as you think.

It would also result in smaller, more difficult to gerrymander districts. On the other hand, it would result in more wacko reps, but that might be OK because they would get drowned out in a larger House of Representatives.

[Statistical]

19. Yes it would add a few more Red districts but overall it would be a huge blue shift.

Uncapping the house and setting a district size so the smallest state gets one would increase the house by 112 votes. Democrats would pick up around 70 seats and Republicans around 40 so net-net it would increase Democratic control of the House by 30 seats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule#Under_the_2010_U.S._Census

[SheltieLover]

3. This!👆

[exboyfil]

5. 566 or so

Would dilute the 2 each state gets for their Senators some.

Another possibility is to distribute proportional by total votes in the state (by Congressional District like NE and ME just reinforces gerrymandering). Right now it is wrong that the large safe states are not even campaigned in.

I personally would like to take out the 2 EVs each state gets, but the Founding Fathers thought that state's interests should also be included (which they further reinforced with the Senate).

[brooklynite]

6. How do you repeal an Act of Congress?

[SharonAnn]

8. By a new Act of Congress?

[brooklynite]

13. You'll take this up with Mitch McConnell?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

14. Moscow's Bitch McConnell won't live forever. Let us hope the USA outlives him at least a bit.

[smirkymonkey]

22. +1000

Hopefully he won't live another year.

[roamer65]

7. They should represent no more than 250,000 people.

They should also live in their districts and not live in DC.

[PTWB]

9. You're not gonna get that past McConnell's senate.

[Grins]

10. That's not the problem.

The problem is two SENATORS per state.

That Wyoming, with 578,000 people has the same number of Senators as California with 39.5 MILLION.

Add in the rules of the Senate and we have minority rule eventually leading to civil strife. We have not solved this problem going back to Andrew Jackson.

[RicROC]

20. yes!

The Senate is obsolete in my opinion.

The Senate should be folded into the House such that for each state with its # of Reps, two of its seats are Senators.

For those constitutional duties designed specifically for the Senate, then only those Senators can vote on the issue.

I do feel there should be 'representatives' who are elected by the larger land mass than districts, hence state-wide voting.

[JHB]

11. It sounds like a solution, but is it really?

A version of this suggested a few days ago was to use the lowest-population state (Wyoming, currently) as the baseline: Divide a state's population by that of the lowest-population state and that's how many representatives a state has (I assumes rounding fractions down for the below, and for EC purposes DC follows this too).

Using that formula in a spreadsheet, then adding back the 2 senators per state (and using 2010 census numbers), I came up with 547 house reps (+1 for DC) and a total of 650 electoral votes.

Then I used those numbers to figure out the EC vote for 2016 using that system. It turned out Trump had an even wider margin of victory, both in raw EC numbers and as percent of EC.

Yes, California and New York pick up big, but so does Texas and Florida, and there are enough moderately-populous red states that pick up enough to outweigh blue state gains.

The discrepancy in representation is something that's far out of whack and needs to be addressed, but this particular solution is not a panacea. It won't cure the problem all by itself.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

15. Part of the problem is the Senate, which represents arbitrarily defined land masses.

[JHB]

17. Part, yes, but like I said, that wasn't the decisive portion.

Relieving the disparity is needed, but there is no neat, one-fix solution. A repealed reapportionment would have still given us Trump, all other things being equal.

We can't let them remain equal.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

18. Agreed. ...

We need at least Congress and the Executive in order to correct root problems that allow for minority tyranny (which we've seen can be as bad as majority tyranny). We need some state legislatures and Secretary of State offices in order to correct gerrymandering and some of the voter suppression.

Correcting the Reapportionment Act is a start toward having the House better reflect the population, as it was intended.

[RicROC]

21. redraw state lines?

I would not be opposed to having state lines re-drawn in the continental US.

Studies have been done to identify like-minded people in areas. For example, the western half of New York State has more cultural similarities with the northern half of Pennsylvania, than NY has with NYC or northern PA has with Philadelphia.

[Crunchy Frog]

12. Don't we need the Senate to do that?

[lastlib]

16. Hey, with all these "originalists" on the Supreme Court, we can sue....

to have it declared unconstitutional! "Plain text" of the Constitution, yanno....

[Wounded Bear]

23. Definitely could use a rework on that one...nt